


Pieces

by scarecrowstories



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Anxiety, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Nightmares, Temporary Amnesia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-21
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:07:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23762815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarecrowstories/pseuds/scarecrowstories
Summary: Barry Bluejeans awakens in a cave, naked and afraid, no memories of how he got there or why his stuff is everywhere? Someone had to know, right?
Comments: 8
Kudos: 18





	Pieces

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to the world falling apart I havent been writing as much as Id like. But. Y'know. We all do our best. PLEASE tell me if you want to see more of this??? Because I don't know if it's Complete yet, like, it Could be, but if folks want more Amnesiac Barry I am HERE TO PROVIDE

Sitting on the floor of his cave, back against the wall, Barry Bluejeans thought for not the first time that he was going crazy. He stared at the pod that he'd climbed out of just hours ago and wondered what on earth was happening. The coin had said some pretty compelling truths about himself that had him convinced there was something magical afoot, but he still didn't like it. Should he believe the coin's claims, that he had left it for himself as a message, instructions to help heal what was clearly a fractured mind? What if it was a trap?

Any number of things could be behind this, and he wasn't sure he liked any of them. What if someone had impersonated his voice and left this recording to lure him somewhere? That, unfortunately, seemed the most likely. Or if he did accept that he'd left it for himself, why was his memory so, for lack of a better term, incomplete? Who or what had erased his knowledge of having left that message? Where had this strange pod come from, and what was it?

And yet…

The flickering candlelight wasn't enough to keep his anxiety at bay. The creeping darkness of the cave was closing in on him, strangling, too thick, too dense, he couldn't breathe, he needed to find her, why was he so alone, where was she?

He realized he was digging his nails painfully into his arms and took a deep breath to steady himself. It did nothing to quiet his racing mind.

Focus, he told himself. What do you know?

Not much. He knew that he burst out of that bizarre pod in this cave a few hours ago, naked, and that his name was Barry Bluejeans. He knew that he had a magic coin which communicated instructions to him in his own voice, and he trusted it despite having no reason to. Despite having reason NOT to. 

He also knew that he was alone. The weight in his chest would have told him as much without the coin. It was like his soul was trying to reach out of his body to reconnect with a piece of itself, ripped away violently but still physically felt like a phantom limb. He ached to close that distance, to follow that pull until he reached whatever was at its end. The anxious part of him that whispered it was a bad idea was easy to push aside in the face of any hope that he could ease that pain.

"A love that defined and redeemed you," it had said. The terrible loneliness nestled in his chest was so painful that he probably would've done literally Anything if it meant a reprieve. The coin said he was looking for someone, and had left instructions for where he should look next. He didn't know who they were, or why he wanted to find them specifically, but the coin had said it was important, so what choice did he have?

"I could stop taking instructions from a stupid magic coin," he considered for a moment, chuckling roughly as he shook his head. It didn't hold any kind of magical compulsion behind its messages - an enchantment just simple enough that if manipulation were necessary, he'd have expected that to be the case. No, it wanted him to take the information on faith. He flipped the coin into the air and caught it. "But what now? I don't even know who she is." He paused, catching himself off guard.

The coin never said it was a woman.

But it totally was, wasn't it? He could almost remember there being a woman, once. So much felt like it was just beyond his grasp, if only he was able to wade through the thick fog that had settled in his brain. It felt like he was sick, in a way. The harder he tried to remember, the louder the ringing in his ears became until he had to stop for fear of passing out. It took a while for the world around him to feel real again.

"Think, Barry, what's the last thing you remember before waking up in the pod?" He dragged himself to his feet as he muttered, scrutinizing the cave for any clues that might help him unlock his past. 

Before the pod…

He remembered panic. He'd lost something important. Someone else was there, someone he cared about. He remembered shouting. Pain. Falling. Gratitude.

"Did I… die?" he asked, tentative, as if afraid voicing it would make it true. He placed a hand on the pod, examining it. No, that was impossible. He would remember dying, surely. It seemed like he'd fallen, like he'd even been badly injured, but if he was still here he must have survived whatever it was. But if he didn't die, then…  
"Did this thing save my life?" It was a fascinating looking device, one that he wished he could study in more detail, had he the resources to do so. Perhaps the fluid had restorative powers that healed his injuries while he slept inside of it. Maybe that also had something to do with his spotty memory. If it had been drawing on his remaining lifeforce to power itself, that could've somehow damaged his memories, right?

Well, in any case, it seemed to have done so in exchange for saving his life, so he couldn't pretend he wasn't grateful. But how had he wound up inside it in the first place? Did someone find him on the verge of death and bring him to this cave? Why did it seem like this cave was a place he'd been occupying for a while, now? Some of his personal belongings were scattered about, as if this were his current place of residence. He'd even found his glasses folded neatly on the desk, waiting for him when he stumbled out, naked and afraid.

There were too many questions. Sighing, he resigned to tackle the problem of the pod later, if he had time. He walked over to his desk and looked at the map. There were places circled and crossed off, lines drawn as if triangulating a location. There was a folded piece of paper, worn, that hurt his heart to look at. He picked it up, not even realizing the tears falling from his eyes until he choked out an unconscious sob.

"Back soon," it read. Every inch of him felt like he was going to burst with grief. He stared at the scribble at the bottom of the sheet, trying to tear past the static in his head to read it until it threatened to swallow him whole. There were letters there, but when he tried to make sense of who those letters belonged to, dizziness and nausea consumed him. He let the note fall back onto the desk and sat down on the cave floor, head in his hands as he wept.

He didn't know why he was crying, only that the note felt like the key to this hole in his heart. "Back soon." Where did she go? Why wasn't she with him? He didn't know who she was, but he knew that he loved her, and that she was absolutely who the coin was talking about. He was going to find her if it was the last thing he ever did.

But first, he reasoned, a nap. Sure, this body was fresh, but his several hour long panic attack had left him exhausted. Luckily there was a bed in the cave, which he appreciatively climbed into. It wasn't comfortable, but it was better than sleeping on the bare rock. There was even a ratty blanket and a pitifully flattened pillow with straw poking through at the edges.

I've had worse, he thought. 

His dreams replayed what must have been an incomplete version of that final memory before the pod. High above the ground, moving, was he flying? Where was that place, so foreign and yet stirring something deep inside his heart? He was standing with someone. They were mourning. There was a name on the tip of his tongue, a face, a feeling, fading.

Who?

The further away she slipped, the sharper his fear became. There was a ringing overtaking his thoughts, drowning out their conversation, but he could see himself shaking the other person by the shoulders before he was shoved back violently, painfully. He stumbled, felt his back up against a rail, tumbled over its edge, and fell.

As he watched the vessel grow smaller in the distance, he knew he should fear the coming impact. Instead he was at peace.

He jolted awake, the nightmare already melting into the parts of his memory that he could no longer consciously access. No matter how determined he was to hold the image in his mind, it slipped further away until he was left with a vague sense of unease. 

Time to get to work, he reasoned, stretching his arms high above his head. The coin had given him a time and a place, and had advised he meet with a dwarf named Gundren Rockseeker. Well. It was better than sitting in the cave all day, trying to recall foggy memories that may mean nothing anyway. Maybe this Gundren knew who wrote the note he had. Maybe he knew where Barry had come from, or more importantly where she had gone - whoever she was.

xxxxxxxxxxxx

Once the odd trio departed, Barry tossed an appropriate amount of coin to the innkeeper and dragged his box of belongings up to his room. If they weren't back in three days, he'd leave - simple as that. That should give them plenty of time to get to the cave, find Gundren, and bring him back. And if they didn't come back, well, that was simple too. 

"They'll be fine," he thought, surprised that he seemed to find within himself some faith for these strangers. He briefly wondered if he'd worked with them before and didn't remember; it wouldn't be the first important thing he forgot. Probably not, though, right? They'd remember him if that was the case.

He stretched out on the bed with a long groan after changing into fresh clothes, his sore muscles still burning. His head was throbbing. A worry was nestled in his chest, turning his stomach. It was directionless, and so naturally his mind aimed it everywhere.

"Probably a bad reaction to the healing potion," he tried to reason with himself. 

By the time it was night, he was still unable to relax. All he'd accomplished was fitful tossing and turning, trying to place their names and faces. They were familiar in a way he hadn't yet encountered in his few months since crawling out from the pod. Did that mean they could answer questions about his past? Again, that didn't seem like it could be likely, or surely they would have commented on knowing him already.

Maybe they didn't feel the need to. The four of them had joked around, playfully passing insults as naturally as if they'd grown up together. Besides, what troubled him most was the elf's face…

"He's beautiful," Barry thought, embarrassed at the way he felt a blush spreading across his face. "So what? Elves are supposed to be!" His heart skipped a beat; he threw an arm over his face as if it would hold in the tears. Why was he crying?! It felt the same as when he found the note in his cave, a hot shame in his gut at how clueless he felt. What didn't he remember? The coin said this wasn't the first time he was going through this… 

How much of himself was missing?

In fact, when he came back to consciousness inside the gerblin cave and saw the elf's face, he'd almost broke down crying then, too. "You're back!" he'd thought, elated, adrenaline coursing through him enough to rouse him to full alertness. 

That was definitely a weird thing to have happened to perfect strangers, right?

Maybe he should ask them about it when they came back. Once they sorted out the situation with Gundren, of course. Finish their business first, then try to get to the bottom of his missing memories. And who knows? Maybe he would bring it up and they'd laugh and say oh Barry, we thought you were acting weird. Maybe they'd sling arms around his shoulders and pull him close and fill in every blank space in his mind.

Or, his anxiety reminded him, more likely they'd stare at him in confusion and call him crazy.

Well. At any rate, he had a day to figure out if he had the courage.

xxxxxxxxxxxx

The dying was so instantaneous that he didn't even realize it had happened until he was blinking in confusion, hovering a few feet above the shining black glass remains of Phandalin. Those first moments were always difficult as his mind worked to reconcile his memories with the amnesiac existence he'd been leading. Thank goodness he always kept a vial of blood back at the cave, he noted as he examined the obsidian plateau.

As soon as he had that thought, panic tore through him, sending crackling tendrils of red-hot energy whipping off of his form. No remains meant they… More of his family was…

And then he saw it: a sphere floating off into the sky, up towards the…

"Well, now hold on," he thought. "This world definitely didn't have two moons."

As he watched the sphere shrink in the distance as it climbed higher, he chuckled to himself, heart full with this years-long conflict. The returning memories were racing through his mind as he remembered the other times he first laid eyes on that second moon, wondering how it had gotten there. The sphere disappeared from view. "If anybody's crazy enough, it's her," he thought fondly, shocked that it hadn't occurred to him before.

Even now, frustrated and lonely as he was, he couldn't pretend he didn't love her just as much as the rest of them. Angry or not, this was his family. Was she at least partially responsible for the horrible ache in his chest? Absolutely. But maybe if he could go see her, try to talk some sense into her… "If I get too close I bet anything she's got some lich wards set up."

Surely she would be willing to see reason.

It was time to return to his cave, get his new body brewing, and formulate a plan to visit Lucretia on the moon.

**Author's Note:**

> Stay safe out there, friends. Be kind to yourselves. Never stop looking for the Light.


End file.
